Innocent lifeless
Pretty children rest in peace
Let us pray for them
The kids were victims
The shooter was victim too
Let's not put a blame
Exclamation sign
Love family, love it right
Don't loose, hug them tight
Dear educators
Part of the victims as well
The lifetime tribute
Mourn traveled the world
Burn by cause last on effect
Careful in our steps
Author's Note:
Deep condolance for the victims of Sandy Hook School in Newtown, Connecticut,
Inspired by Zamalea George Poetry "Sweet Children, Sleep"
*****************************************************************
4th place
poetry soup VIGIL" Free Poetry Contest
Sponsor SKAT- AB SIN THE-

The rising sun has set.
Night has fallen.
The plow rests,
tillage and toil finished.
The corn ear withers,
but seeds are saved.
The scrolls are opened
event recorded;
the news spread:
"The sun has set,
the old Owl has flown
into the Heavens."
Yet, the sun will rise
and peek over the horizon,
the tractor will roar,
a new crop will sprout,
Green hands will turn brown
the flag will wave,
financial accounts recorded,
hospitality offered,
and the light of brotherhood shared.
Your torch has lit fires
that flicker and flame;
The fledgling will grow
and, hopefully, become wise;
New eras and life-chapters
will begin,
continuing the credo
as a Legacy to you:
"Learning to Do,
Doing to Learn,
Earning to Live,
Living to Serve."*
*National FFA Organization Motto

You were always happy, always on the move
with a great zest for life and a heart full of love.
We loved you too and checked to see if you’d get mad
if we mimicked your habits, but you laughed instead.
When we were in school together, you often horsed around;
I ribbed you about eye trouble, eyes too close to the ground.
You lived life with gusto, knowing your time was short;
playing hard, working harder, often with a jolly retort.
Honest to a fault, you saw the positive side of things;
kept things in order, solid rock with no mood swings.
Cut off jeans, gray tee shirt, tinted glasses, baseball hat;
great big grin, teasing quip, a big hello, a friendly chat.
You were the best teacher any student ever had;
I could call on you to help as though you were my dad.
You drove my school bus on many a winter morn;
dressed in brown coveralls, bottom legs frayed and worn.
You were there in summer, helping coach baseball games;
at football with your camera or turning cartwheels in the gym.
You taught us how to care, how to study, how to play;
how to work on the computer and make the most of every day.
So determined to learn, spending hours at a throw;
self-teaching all the things a teacher needed to know.
You are the poem of my life, who you were tells the tale;
your poem will last forever, healing memories never pale.
You wrote the words of this poem, pages of my life tell the story;
you will read them back to me, when we meet again in glory.

To capture the attention everyone else gets but you
You do whatever you can to get it
Even if its bad
You continue to do it
To get the attention you never had
And the attention you will never get
You want the perfect body and soul that everyone else has
You want to feel important... special
So you seek for a better
Much higher thing
What you need
You dont quite know
But you decide that
You will do whatever it takes to make you happy
And sometimes
That means..
suicide
Sometimes it means
Shooting someone
Because the hole inside your heart needs filled
And thats the only thing you ever had
The only thing you see
The only thing that someone gave to you
The thing that got everyone talking about you
The thing that got everyone to even look at you
So if you decide to kill someone
You kill yourself afterwards
Because you felt lonely again
You felt that no one was watching you
That no one even cared
Then you think about all the things that
Bugged you
And you pull the trigger
Then theres no more you
Next time someone sees you
You will be on the news
Where now you are special
And important

Judas betrayed Jesus’s whereabouts
End, was near
Son of God, knew this
Universe of the Son of the Divine Father, restored
Sins of man forgiven, Prince of our Universal domain, alive in the hearts of his children

********
The Lord is My teacher
He Shepherds Me to the Path
He takes' all my worry away!
--------
He Shines the path to the Light
He also, help's Me to sleep at night
--------
My fear's are of a need to cry
Yet, and still He severs' My fears'
And tempests My Soul
As My blood suddenly began
To run Cold
--------
He severs' My Soul
When I am confound in Lost
He subjugates' My past
And makes life a
Meaningful wonder task
And I did not have to ask?
--------
He keeps' Me from strife
Deceit and plunder
--------
He sub-side all of My feelings'
And this is no wonder...
--------
Even though He had carried
His Cross on His own
He never forsake Me
He never left Me alone
- Fore -
I am but one of His legion
And He was but,
The One and only begotten Son
He was the baby Child Jesus
The Lord and Holy One!
I shall treasure Him
Threw out the day's of my life!
GF

To the Newtown Children
A poet cries with broken heart
Look thine hearts be washen clean with death,
God knows how hastily can be
By an unfitting goodly young man
Become just another evil’s killer.
Take thou no mean of life
That so tenderly and small
Arranged now along that cold room
Where a hundred of parents
Like you and I look on poor children that thou think:
One day they shall be a doctor or a thinker like us.
To understand really why the hungry death
Has to do for their final journey in front of this sickness?
O, children! American children! My children!
I warn thee in all my heart and soul
That could not happen so earlier on life
And where thou cast the peace and saint in the kindness of grace
Take care of them from danger, thou take for a leaf
And makes my heart bleeding every one like us become angry
How in this heavenly nation this massive fate could occur?
Hold me fast in thine embrace God,
Where my despair cannot be silenced,
Let you and me and everyone else to knee and cross
Our fingers against our chest and pray for them,
Give them, Lord, thy blessing give,
Pray for them and mother as well,
And I shall finish this poem with trembled
Fingers and tears cascading over this bloody
Sheet as an awaken wind has just blown it from me.

A clear view of the Arabian blue
I don’t ‘inch’ closer, I ‘mile’ ahead
In a relaxed cockpit, shared by two.
A proud teacher, my knowledge I spread
‘To fly they must have flown before’
Break this infinite loop; I choose instead
Let them learn, I don’t keep score.
Even if mistakes are made;
To make them like me, I will ignore.
The airstrip is small, a challenging glade.
Mangalore approaches, I flew from Dubai,
My fingers remain crossed, I am little afraid.
The plane crashes, sixty and hundred die.
I teach others rules. But rules - to me they don’t apply.
Based on the theme from the novel Airframe from Michael Crichton superimposed on the ill-
fated plane crash Air India Express Flight 812, on 22 May 2010.

Hamba Kahle Anene Booysen! (1996 – 2013)
Dead at 17, brutally raped and left to die,
in the dirt,
at a construction site in Bredasdorp.
‘horrific’, ‘repulsed’,
‘brutally raped’, ‘shocked’,
do these words mean anything,
to anyone,
anymore.
Not to Anene Booysen,
murdered at 17, brutally raped and left to die,
in the dirt,
at a construction site in Bredasdorp.
Anene was raped,
savagely mutilated,
Her 17 year old body tossed aside,
by the hands of men.
Men, always men,
cowardly, beastly, perverted, twisted men.
‘Beastly’, ‘perverted’, ‘twisted’,
do these words mean anything,
to anyone,
anymore.
Not to Anene Booysen,
who now lies cold and dead.
How many Anene Booysens will it take,
for us,
society,
families,
people,
human-beings,
and,
men, especially men,
to excise the ghastly menace,
of the heinous capacity that resides,
within men,
always men,
to brutalise, rape, mutilate, and murder.
‘Brutalise’, ‘murder’, ‘rape’,
do these words mean anything,
to anyone,
anymore.
Not to Anene Booysen,
murdered at 17, brutally raped and left,
to die,
in the dirt,
at a construction site,
in Bredasdorp.
Anene Booysen
(1996 – 2013)
* – Hamba Kahle – “Farewell, Travel Well” in Zulu
** – Bredasdorp is a small town near Cape Town, South Africa

Woe to mortal limits in death begun
For dust you are and to dust you return;
Now all that's of this mad fleeting is done
But for sorrow and ash in dateless urn.
To do, and unto my lost cause to teach -
Did I not this nobility disgrace!
Yet still you sought to seek, to touch, to reach,
And to look upon the soul and its face.
I lament that age, that fear, that spoiling,
And by your leave there is my tribute owed;
Like the thresher to the chaff long toiling
You were as the driven wind that winnowed.
Real was my discontent - my fakery -
Yet you never failed or abandoned me.
February 1994

i remember well the name of my 11th grade English
teacher---
Ms. Tominson,
who had been rumored to have given
some of her students
fellatio, during the time when she wasn’t lecturing on
Shakespeare---
perhaps it was the passion in her that
let her go wild after hours,
drinking with her teen pupils &
then sucking them dry---
but what led to her decent into
christian science,
one may never know---
it was a part of her life kept secret,
an insanity that only she knew &
when she fell down her stairs
(or so we were told),
she refused medical treatment,
lying in bed, unable to move,
hoping, no doubt,
for “the good lord’s guidance”---
but it never came,
um, pssst…..
(whispering) because “he” never does
&
she died TWO MONTHS LATER.
when her death was made known to us
over the loudspeaker,
in early morning home room,
those who had been rumored to have been
pleasured by her,
had conflicted feelings,
because though they still wanted blowjobs,
they were sad to see her go,
for she was, after all, a good teacher &
a fun person,
despite having been brainwashed by the
absurdity of Eddy.

Once on a yellow piece of paper w/green lines
he wrote a poem
And he called it "Chops"
because that was the name of his dog
And that's what it was all about
And his teacher gave him an A & a gold star
And his mother hung it on the kitchen door
and read it to his aunts
That was the year Father Tracy
took all the kids to the zoo
And he let them sing on the bus
And his little sister was born
with tiny toenails and no hair
And his mother and father kissed a lot
And the girl around the corner sent him a
Valentine signed with a row of X's &
He had to ask his father what the X's meant
And his father always tucked him in bed at night
And was always there to do it.
Once on a piece of white paper w/blue lines
he wrote a poem
And he called it "Autumn"
because that was the name of the season
And that's what it was all about
And his teacher gave him an A & asked him to
write more clearly &
His mother never hung it on the kitchen door
because of its new paint & the kids told him
that Father Tracy smoked cigars & left butts
on the pews & sometimes they would burn holes
That was the year his sister got glasses
with thick lenses and black frames &
The girl around the corner laughed
when he asked her to go see Santa Claus
And the kids told him why
his mother and father kissed a lot &
His father never tucked him in bed at night
And his father got mad
when he cried for him to do it.
Once on a paper torn from his notebook
he wrote a poem
And he called it "Innocence: A Question"
because that was the question about his girl
And that's what it was all about & his
professor gave him an A & a strange steady
look & his mother never hung it on the
kitchen door because he never showed her
That was the year that Father Tracy died
And he forgot how the end
of the Apostle's Creed went & he caught his
sister making out on the back porch
And his mother and father never kissed
or even talked & the girl around the corner
wore too much makeup
That made him cough when he kissed her
but he kissed her anyway
because that was the thing to do
And at three a.m. he tucked himself into bed
his father snoring soundly.
Once on a brown paper bag
he tried another poem
And he called it "Absolutely Nothing"
Because that's what it was really all about
And he gave himself an A
and a slash on each damned wrist
And he hung it on the bathroom door
because this time he didn't think
he could reach the kitchen.

I am who I am though much changed since.
Could compare a life to the changing seasons like the summer heat that dies fast
in the bite of October air,
or the colder December winds.
And very little time passes.
Hearing the song softer now, I remember how it was then.
The days and smallest moments that carved both painful and painfully beautiful scars
into the easiest of memories.
Like films of dust that cover everything not often used,
but waiting.
And to think about what should’ve been,
between the lazy distance both too far gone and almost nothing but a short coming
home to find it just as it was,
only touched by the dust of a few years,
Is useless.
Just as it was then,
when it was us and a boy we all knew,
(or thought we knew the kind)
his awkward form sitting tall with a measured confidence that knew we were
watching,
(and using him for another good time)
and still seemed easy enough on the surface to show us
he was like the rest of us-
A child like us.
Fighting and claiming and fighting the uncontained wisdom of children.
But he, ahead of his time,
got up from his desk and painted his own stairway to heaven
and we watched while he climbed.
Believing that he was old enough and wise enough
to measure speed and resistance.
That that would be enough to maintain the strongest and most fragile of us.
But instead, as we walked silently between the pews he taught us
something useful.

A holy man in a hospital bed
Preciously wrapped,
Like a mystic infant
Radiant, beautifully sculpted
against white sheets.
You're dying you say.
Your voice a lamp,
Another lesson strung
on a rosary of sacred moons,
to be held in prayer,
while darkness swaddles you.

I’ve seen a wasteful of these dry classrooms,
One study in particular mocks me,
The textbook that never retired till June,
Indeed, her mass theories taunted till three.
How dare she stretch limits to its fair exit,
Invest my time, for diction better learned.
She sighed, for works found less than expected,
And smiled on my effort with no concern.
So these thoughts that now visit do tribute,
To slight lessons she urged youth to keep.
At times, her quotes seek me, to contribute,
I keep these, and her presence, as I weep.
For there is no filter or sub in place,
That could erase her ink from this fond space.
R.I.P. Harriet Meek

Snatched to the second heaven the Son of man..
Son of man stands before the congregation of angels
and the accuser says... You only gave glory to your Name
go back the verdict is read.. and live amongst them mortals
live as a man... the tears are shed for one who has followed
the wishes of the Creator.... doesnt deserve the one who Makes
makes Us rest... choosing to rest in the second heaven and its
Its the Arkangel Israel who gave up his position and prestige till....
till eternity... the One walks and when the candle blows out.. will
Relights.. thats why were engrossed in the worship in candles.. still
religting of the candles.. for they said- you gave Glory to your Name
Him and choosing to forgo life itself.... You were rewaded with life..
lewis k nyaga
its my take....
sorry if you find it sacrilegios
its not my intention

Once on a yellow piece of paper with green lines
he wrote a poem
And he called it "Chops"
because that was the name of his dog
And that's what it was all about
And his teacher gave him an A
And his mother hung it on the kitchen door
That was the year that Father Tracy
took all the kids to the zoo
And he let them sing on the bus
And his little sister was born
with no hair
And his mother and father kissed a lot
And the girl around the corner sent him a valentine signed with a row of X's
and he had to ask his father what the X's meant
And his father always tucked him in bed at night
And was always there to do it.
Once on a piece of white paper with blue lines
he wrote a poem
And he called it "Autumn"
because that was the name of the season
And that's what it was all about
And his teacher gave him an A
and asked him to write more clearly
And his mother never hung it on the kitchen door
because of its new paint
And the kids told him
that Father Tracy smoked cigars
And left butts on the pews
And sometimes they would burn holes
That was the year his sister got glasses
with thick lenses and black frames
And the girl around the corner laughed
when he asked her to go see Santa Claus
And the kids told him why
his mother and father kissed a lot
And his father never tucked him in bed at night
And his father got mad when he cried for him to do it.
Once on a paper torn from his notebook
he wrote a poem
And he called it "Innocence: A Question"
because that was the question about his girl
And that's what it was all about
And his professor gave him an A
and a strange steady look
And his mother never hung it on the kitchen door because he never showed her
That was the year that Father Tracy died
And he forgot how the end of the Apostle's Creed went
And he caught his sister making out on the back porch
And his mother and father never kissed or even talked
And the girl around the corner wore too much makeup that made him cough when he kissed her
but he kissed her anyway because that was the thing to do
And at three A.M. he tucked himself into bed
his father snoring soundly.
That's why on the back of a brown paper bag
he tried another poem
And he called it "Absolutely Nothing"
Because that's what it was really all about
And he gave himself an A
and a slash on each damned wrist
And he hung it on the bathroom door
because this time he didn't think
he could reach the kitchen.

all of them sustain,
some wilted,
all vital,
each a part of the teacher tree.
speaking different parables,
humming different songs,
each falling its own way in the end.
tell me, tell me teacher tree,
why they have to die?
some too soon to truly live,
struggling and suffering.
the sun will scorch,
the winds will dry,
each one of your sacred leaves.
the teacher tree won't answer,
and all the leaves will try
to tell you why they matter.
every living one does matter,
and was made so all could exist.
the teacher tree stays silent,
but answers every one,
and every fallen leaf
is one with him,
forever and forever.

A little girl walked to school one day to find her friends already playing. She stood
wordlessly, and watch them pass a ball about. They ran and frolicked, and
jumped with glee. With out even a word passed her way. As silently as she came
she turned and left.
In the school she went down turning halls, and up twisting stairs. To the highest
point she could find. Here she sat near a window facing her friends down below.
She removed a book from her bag. Its cover was black, and lacked a title. She
opened it, its pages were blank, and began to write a story.
Many years came, and passed, her friends had all gone on to different schools.
Some stayed in contact with one another, but as they grew so did the distance
between them. The friendship that had meant so much years ago, had all but
vanished, But the little girl always remained.
One day a teacher approached the little girl, and asked her why she wasn’t
playing outside with her friends. The little girl dropped her pencil, and looked up
at the teacher with a smile.
The unity between friends will never last, but in my story it can last forever.
The little girl picked her pencil up, and began to write once more. The teacher
walked off still astonished to hear such words from a child. She was almost out
the room when she turned, and faced the little girl.
Your right friendship doesn’t last, but it will also never die. For every persons life
you touch a part of them you take as they take a part of you. New friends will
come, old ones will leave, but that part will always be yours. Yours to keep, it
helps unite us, it helps make us one.
The little girl closed her book, and then she vanished. The teacher walked closer
to the desk, but found only dust. The book still laid atop the desk. The teacher
picked it up, and began to read its story. She cried while reading, she cried at the
end. The story of a child who’s life had come to an end.

Finishers
By Curtis Johnson
The burial ground should not be a place of buried treasures.
The bodies of the deceased are all that should be found there.
We brought nothing into this world, and nothing should go out.
Blessed are we who die in the Lord whose works shall follow.
Our deeds and alms have spoken, and the living have benefited.
When it's my time to go, will I have run the patient race and fought the good fight?
When my time is up, will I have discovered the "why" of me, and lived out my purpose?
When I cease to exist on God's green earth, will I have spoken in truth and lived in purity?
May the treasures I leave behind be the sort that, unlike me, shall never die.
May I tell what I have seen, teach what I have known, and share what I have understood.
May love inhabit me, hope strive through me, and may God's wisdom flow from me.
May I lay a foundation upon which others may build and live happily.
May I model a life of respect and honesty worthy of others to emulate.
May I live out my life's calling and find no rest until all is said and all is done. Through trials and sore distress, may I not quit until like my Lord I say, "IT IS FINISHED".
1/23/2014cj

Here I lie
Left here to die
By those considered allies
So today is the day love dies
Harden the heart
Deaden the soul
Let your heart grow cold
But wait my advice should not be heeded
For I am not what you needed
Don't be like me
Be wise and see
That the love in your heart is what makes you good
Don't put on the darkness' hood
For the day love dies
Is the day the soul dies
And i don't want that for you my dear child